Laurie L. Patton

Laurie L. Patton is the president of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. From 2015 to 2025 Patton served as the first woman president of Middlebury College. Patton also served as dean of Duke University’s Trinity College of Arts and Sciences and the Durden Professor of Religion, and as Candler Professor of Religion and Inaugural Director of the Center for Faculty Development at Emory University. She began her career at Bard College.

Patton is an authority on South Asian history, culture, and religion, and, more recently, theories of conflict and interreligious engagement in the public square. She is the author or editor of twelve scholarly books and seventy articles in these areas. She is also the author of three books of poems, and has translated the classical Sanskrit text, The Bhagavad Gita, for the Penguin Classics Series.

Patton earned her BA from Harvard University and her PhD from the University of Chicago, and served as president of the American Academy of Religion in 2019. She holds honorary degrees from Rutgers University and Hebrew Union College, as well Duke University’s Samuel Dubois Cooke award in community and civic life.